Toward a Definition of Foreign Language Lexical Competence
Toward a Definition of Foreign Language Lexical Competence

Summary/Abstract: The paper covers problems related to the basic content of the definition of foreign language lexical competence (FLLC) and in particular the FLLC of middle school students. It surveys the history and the current state of the problem in recent foreign language (FL) teaching. The article is based on research studies and followed by the theoretical background. It presents in brief the process of defining communicative competence (CC) and lexical competence (LC) as its counterpart which started in the late 1960s. The paper describes the development of some linguistic findings on communicative language competence. Several important definitions and a framework of CC are presented. This paper contains the definitions of “competence,” “FL competence,” “FLCC,” “FLLC.” The proposed definition suggests that FLLC of a student of the middle educational level is defined as his or her cognitive, practical, motivational, reflexive-behavioral ability. FL lexical activity is based on the acquisition of a certain lexicon within the age period, adequate use of lexemes, the appropriate use of figurative expressions, phraseological units. The study concludes by highlighting the main features of the FLLC of students in the middle stage of learning a FL.

• Details
• Contents